April 25, 2014 -- Truthout, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission of the author -- On April 22, the Ukraine government announced a new military offensive against its citizens in the east of the country. The UK Telegraph says 11,000 troops and 160 armoured vehicles are involved.

The offensive is directed at the popular protest movement that has
deepened since the coming to power of a rightist government in Kiev two
months ago. Protesters want economic and social improvements to the
harsh conditions of life faced by most people in eastern Ukraine. They
oppose the austerity policies of the new government that are a condition
of its cherished hopes for closer economic ties with the European
Union.

The movement increasingly believes that
political autonomy and retaining economic ties with Russia are the only
way out of the region’s economic morass.

Attacks by Ukrainian armed forces so far have killed at least four people in two clashes.

A pattern has quickly emerged of the government exaggerating the
results of its offensive. It claims it has retaken public buildings in
some of the 10 or so cities taken over by the protest movement in the
past month. However, BBC journalists, CBC Radio reporter Derek Stoffel (evening news report April 23) and many other journalists on the ground say they’re seeing nothing resembling that. The Globe and Mail‘s
Mark MacKinnon, who has been in Ukraine for weeks, wrote from Warsaw on
April 23: “Despite the ramped-up rhetoric, there were few signs
Wednesday of the renewed Ukrainian military operation in Donbass.”

The government claims that soldiers killed five protesters during an
attack on a protest checkpoint on the outskirts of Slavyansk (Sloviansk)
on April 24. The mayor of the town told assembled journalists afterward
that one died.​

The government’s action is a violation of the international agreement
reached in Geneva on April 17 that was supposed to lessen tensions in
the country. It said there should be no military intervention and called
for disarming of irregular militias. But in the Ukraine government’s
interpretation, disarming does not apply to the rightist and fascist
gangs in the territory under its control.

Indeed, evidence from the assault on a checkpoint at Slavyansk on
April 20 that killed three residents points to a rightist militia unit
as responsible for the carnage. Several of the attackers’ bullet-ridden
cars littered the site of the clash afterward. As reported by the Mark MacKinnon,
residents say they captured weapons, a supply of US dollars and
aerial maps of the city. A Russian reporter claims to have found a
business card in one of the cars, bearing the name of a leader of the
Right Sector fascist party, Dmytro Yarosh.

Mitch Potter of the Toronto Starreported from Donetsk
that Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and a leading candidate
in the presidential election to take place on May 25, has called for the
formation of more militias to bolster the country’s military in
confronting the protest movement in eastern Ukraine. During a visit to
Donetsk on April 18, she was photographed shaking hands with militia volunteers, masked men identified as the Artyomovsky Battalion.

According to Nicolai Petrov,
a professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island and frequent
writer and commentator on Ukraine, the new government has severed ties
with consultants of previous governments, including foreign academics.
It is favouring, instead, advisors with hardened, right-wing views. The government quickly reneged on a promise made
only days ago to hold a referendum next month that would provide for a
decentralised, federal political structure for Ukraine.

Petrov also told his interviewer that the government is recruiting
from fascist groups that were prominent in the protests in Kiev’s Maidan
Square for its bolstered "national guard".

Military escalation by NATO countries

The Ukraine government is receiving strong backing from the US,
European Union and Canada. Soon after assuming power, it agreed to tough
austerity measures as a condition of promised financial assistance from
its foreign backers and international financial institutions.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk hosted an official visit by US Vice President Joseph Biden
beginning April 20. Coincidentally, the first military offensive was
launched on April 15 after CIA Director John Brennan made a quiet visit
to Kiev.

That one quickly broke down when Ukrainian troops realised they were
not confronting “terrorists” but, instead, unarmed civilians with deep
grievances against the government. Civilians shouted at the soldiers and
told them to put down their guns.

Yatsenyuk told NBC television
last weekend that he wants more support from the US, including for
Ukraine’s military. “We need financial and economic support. We need to
overhaul the Ukrainian military. We need to modernise our security and
military forces.”

The renewed assault by the Ukraine government is a dangerous
escalation being matched by the big powers. The US has dispatched 600
additional soldiers to Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. It is
conducting naval exercises in the Black Sea, including with Romania,
which borders on the majority Russian-speaking region in southwest
Ukraine. NATO will hold military exercises on Ukrainian territory in July.

The US and its NATO allies say they will place sanctions on
Russia’s economy if it intervenes militarily in Ukraine. Last month, in
the aftermath of the March 16 vote in Crimea to secede from Ukraine and
join the Russian Federation, the big powers sanctioned specific Russian
business and political leaders, but not the all-important oil or gas
industries. The US accuses Russia of fostering unrest in eastern
Ukraine and having a secretive agenda to annex the region.

It might seem downright unfair for the US to blame Russia for
stirring unrest when Russia’s business interests and its political
stability, too, are threatened by a restive population in eastern
Ukraine aspiring for a modicum of social justice. But such is the
ruthlessness of the world’s superpower when dealing with its capitalist
rivals, particularly those who are not its traditional allies in NATO or
in the ‘Five Eyes’ spying alliance.

Canada, a NATO member and one of the Five Eyes, is joining the NATO
buildup. It has added six fighter aircraft to its existing force in
Europe. Foreign minister John Baird made a bellicose visit to Poland and
the Baltic states on April 24 and 25.

Russia is responding forcefully to the attacks and threats against it. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has told Russia Today television, “Russian citizens being attacked is an attack against the Russian Federation.

“If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of
Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia
[Georgia], I do not see any other way but to respond in full accordance
with international law.”

In 2008, a pro-imperialist government in Georgia launched an invasion
to seize the autonomous region of South Ossetia that shares a border
with Georgia and Russia. That attack was quickly repelled by Ossetian
and Russian military forces. South Ossetia declared itself a sovereign
republic. A recent survey by the Washington Post found overwhelming support in South Ossetia for integration into the Russian Federation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told a televised media forum in St.
Petersburg on April 24, “If the current regime in Kiev has begun to use
the army against its country’s population then it is, without any doubt,
a very serious crime against their people.” He has said all along that
Russia will act to defend Russian language people in eastern Ukraine.

“If these people have opted for a hot stage, which is in fact a
counter-insurgency operation, it will definitely have certain
consequences for those who make such decisions,” Putin said.

What the people want

Nicolai Petrov says there is a strong consensus in eastern Ukraine
for political autonomy. He says it is wrong to claim that the protest
movement there is about secession from Ukraine and integration with
Russia: “… it is inaccurate—and I have to stress this—inaccurate to call
them pro-Russian or separatist, because what they are asking for is
autonomy—some define that as federalism, some do not—in any case, a
greater say in local affairs within the Ukrainian federation.”

Commenting on the new government in Kiev, Petrov says, "much as we
were seeing in the previous three months an expression of civil society
in the western and central regions [of Ukraine], the reaction against
the takeover of power in February was an expression of a similar civic
concern and, indeed, the beginnings, at least, of the emergence of a
civil society in the east, but around very different issues, issues of
concern to the population there. Specifically, will they be able to
retain their cultural identity? Will they be able to preserve their
economic ties, which are strong, with Russia?”

There are, of course, many people in eastern Ukraine who do not wish
for greater autonomy. The region is multinational and there are divided
political and historical loyalties. Those whose sympathies lie with
Ukraine believe that autonomy will lead to closer ties with Russia. But
Petrov cites a poll conducted in April by the Kiev Institute of
International Studies in the eight, majority- Russian-speaking regions
of Ukraine (in the east and south of the country). It shows that only 25
per cent of respondents favour closer economic ties to Europe. Forty-seven per cent want closer ties in the opposite direction—with Russia.
Eighty per cent said that ties between Ukraine and Russia should be
friendly and, unlike with other countries, borders should be completely
open.

One of the most informative of the foreign journalists in eastern
Ukraine is National Public Radio’s Eleanor Beardsley. Her frequent
reports challenge a simplistic view of an eastern Ukraine prone to
violence and wracked by “separatist” and “pro-Russian” sentiments.

Beardsley reported from Donetsk on April 19:
“Though Kiev’s interim government offered concessions to the
separatists on Friday [April 18] proposing a plan that would give
eastern regions more autonomy and the Russian language a special status,
nobody here seems to believe them or care. People say they either want
to become a separate country or a part of Russia, and it’s not just the
older crowd longing for a return to Soviet days. A group of young people
handing out fliers wear bright red T-shirts marked ‘USSR 2.0’,
suggesting a computer upgrade from the original version.”

In an interview from Slavyansk on April 21, Beardsley reports
overwhelming support in the industrial city of 120,000 for the protest
movement. Referring to the armed protesters occupying government
building, she reported: “So they’re absolutely not leaving, and the
population supports them. They say these separatists are protecting
their city from the fascist elements in Kiev.”

She went on: “I don’t know how the Ukrainian government is going to
get control over places like this… I think the Ukrainian central
government has lost control of towns like Slavyansk.”

Beardsley has broadcast several reports on the grinding economic
conditions in the industrial region of Donbass. The capital city Donetsk
is an attractive city, she says, but conditions are grim in smaller
cities such as Slavyansk. Ukraine’s per capita GDP is considerably less
than in Russia and “the people feel that Russia offers greater economic
prospects”.

The Globe’s Mark MacKinnon painted a withering economic portrait of the industrial and coal mining city of Horlivka in an April 21 dispatch. He wrote:

In much of the Donbass region – as the coal basin around the city of
Donetsk is known – Soviet times [pre-1990] meant a job for life, a
guaranteed pension and free medical care. The coal miners and factory
workers who lived here were lionized as heroes of Soviet labour. Today,
more than half of the 230 coal mines here have been closed for good.
Average salaries in cities such as Horlivka are barely $100 a month,
just above the cost of living.

People here live on $2 a day. You don’t think we should fight? You
don’t think we should demand a normal life?” said Oleg Korenyev, who
says he used to work as a taxi driver in Kiev. “In Kiev, people can
afford to pay $4 or $5 for a cup of coffee. Do we deserve worse than
people in Kiev?”

The NPR’s Beardsley says the rightist character of the government in
Kiev is a major concern of the people in the streets. They refer to it
as "fascist" and cite the extraordinary influence of the Right Sector
fascist movement.

“Everyone is talking about the Right Sector”, reports Beardsley.
Forty-two year old Victoria tells her, “We still remember how our
grandparents fought the Nazis during WWII. We don’t understand why the
West is protecting these people in Kiev.”

The protest movement is calling for disarming of the fascist movement in Ukraine. Yevgeny Gordik told Reuters, “Who should surrender weapons first? Let us see Right Sector disarm first, let them make the first step and we will follow.”

In Slavyansk, 27-year-old Anton criticises the US intervention in
Kiev that helped bring about a change in regime. He told Beardsley, “We
don’t invade your territory, so why does America try to tell us what to
do?”

The Ukrainian government is holding a presidential election on May
25. A big factor prompting its latest military intervention and the NATO
build-up are the announcements by many of the city councils (communes)
of the protest movement of plans to hold autonomy referendums on May 11.

In Lugansk, for example, voters will be asked whether the region
should become an autonomous entity. A second vote planned for May 18
will ask whether Lugansk region should be independent or join Russia.

According to many news reports, the protest movement does not
automatically look for political leadership from Russia. The leader of
the "Donetsk People’s Republic", Denis Pushilin, told The Telegraph’s David Blair
that the Russian foreign minister did not speak for the movement at the
meeting in Geneva on April 17. “He [Sergei Lavrov] did not do it for us
– he did it in the name of the Russian Federation. Nobody asked us, but all the actions of the Russian Federation are for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”

Following the Geneva meeting, Pushilin told reporters
in Donetsk, “As far as disarmament goes, the Kiev junta has already
begun violating its agreements since yesterday by announcing that it
will not pull its troops out of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.” These cities
were targets of the first military assault ten days ago.

As reported on CBC television news on April 21, the new mayor of
Slavyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, says “Whatever had been decided in
Geneva has been decided without our participation.” He wants Russian
peacekeeping soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine is a multinational country with a long and difficult history.
It was subjugated by the old Russian empire. Its borders have been
redrawn by every major European war. The national liberation program of
the Russian Revolution of 1917 made impressive gains in the early years,
but the revolution was ultimately overwhelmed by harsh economic and
social conditions that were inherited from the old regime and greatly
exacerbated by the destruction of World War I and the civil war
imposed by the old regime from 1918-21. The imperialist countries,
including the US, Canada and Britain, committed tens of thousands of
soldiers to the civil war in an effort to drown the revolution in blood.

National subjugation was reimposed by the Stalin regime that usurped
power in the late 1920s and 1930s, and by its successors. In the midst
of all that, Ukraine suffered the horror of the German invasion and
occupation of 1941-44.

Following independence in 1991, Ukraine’s government and a new,
aspiring capitalist class failed to take the country forward. As in
Russia, the dismantling of the state-owned economy inherited from the
Soviet Union brought only greater hardship to large sections of the
population.

It will take time for a coherent, socially progressive political
movement for the future of Ukraine to be created. The economy has been
run into the ground. The country is squeezed by the aggressive powers to
the west that want to keep Ukraine weak and subjugated, and by the
Russian neighbour to the east that is pursuing its own capitalist
interests.

Notwithstanding the immense challenges it faces, the achievements of
the protest movement in eastern Ukraine are impressive. This is a
popular, proletarian movement with strong social justice aspirations. It
has acted judiciously, avoiding needless violence and winning much
admiration at home and internationally. It can provide a progressive
impulse to the rest of Ukraine which is otherwise enduring an alarming
rise of right wing and fascist political forces.

The protest movement should be recognised and welcomed, with all its
inevitable faults. Progressives around the world should act to defend
it, including in whatever forms of political autonomy and association
with Ukraine and Russia that the people choose. The threats and assaults
of the Ukraine government and its imperialist backers against eastern
Ukraine and Russia should be vigorously opposed.

Comments

Roger, this is a much better piece than your last effort. Putting the proletarian heart into the body of resistance makes for a much more lively (and factual) article.

Especially when contrasted with the overtly counter-revolutionary line being pedalled by The Militant (American SWP), who in their last issue support the sending of Ukrainian troops into the Donbass and who complained that American imperialism, in the form of Joe Biden, was only bringing "a mere" 50 million in military aid.

It never ceases to amaze me how the question of war separates the social chauvinists and bourgeois nationalists from the revolutionary internationalists.

At this stage of late capitalism, the ideology of nationalism has become the flag around which reaction is wrapped. This includes both Ukrainian and Russian varieties.